


white wolves with worn-down teeth

by kathillards



Category: Kamen Rider Gaim
Genre: Mental Health Issues, Multi, PTSD, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 10:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19392115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: What's the worth of one boy against the weight of the universe?





	white wolves with worn-down teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiriya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiriya/gifts).



> happy early birthday taylor!! ty for the ot3-to-end-all-ot3s prompt, i hope this provides some of that angsty hurt/comfort fix-it fic you were looking for!  
> title + quote from [_national geographic_](https://elisabethhewer.co.uk/post/123138712976/) by elisabeth hewer.

i dream gold and  
wake up crying.  
i dream god and—

_national geographic_ , [elisabeth hewer](http://elisabethhewer.co.uk/)

Kaito wakes up all at once.

There’s a pounding in his head. Too much light, everywhere, all around him. It simmers under his skin and curls in his stomach.

He wants to throw up, but when he tries to lift a hand, he can’t.

Chains encircle his wrists, steel-cold and unyielding. He’s sitting on a dry grass floor, he realizes now, and his hands are pinned to a tree. No matter how he tries to tug and pull, he can’t get free.

His feet are chained, too. His clothes are tattered and his hair is falling into his eyes. The wind is coming harsh and furious, shaking leaves off branches, digging deep into his bones. It takes him another moment to realize that he tastes blood when he licks his lips.

A thought hits him with frightening clarity: _I lost._

Another follows: _Lost what?_

He can’t remember.

Kaito stops tugging on the chains and tries to even his breathing. _I can remember. I can remember…_

A forest bursts into a picture in his mind. Wild and green. Full of creeping vines, purple fruit, monsters. Stone ruins buried deep inside. An old man—no, a monster—no—a man—holding a golden fruit.

And then the man is a girl and the girl is Mai and she looks at him with only pity in her gaze.

_You were never really strong_ , she says, but her voice is not her own, it’s Kouta’s.

Kaito opens his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t want to remember, after all.

“He’s still dreaming,” Kouta says. His voice sounds very faraway, muffled like he’s hearing it underwater. “Do you think he’s going to wake up?”

A warm hand presses on his forehead. “He has to.”

That’s Mai. Nobody else could ever be so determined, so faithful in the face of so much horror.

“It’s been three weeks, Mai,” says Kouta softly. Somehow, this comes through loud and clear.

“He’ll wake up,” Mai insists. “It’s Kaito. He’s not going to let some stupid forest be the end of him.”

He tries to reach out a hand towards her, but the chains stop him from moving.

“I know that,” Kouta says. “I believe in him. But maybe we should take up Takatora’s offer—”

“ _No_ ,” says Mai fiercely. “No more Yggdrasil. No more of that forever. He’ll wake up on his own.”

Kouta doesn’t say anything, but he can hear the question lingering in the air: _Why would he do that?_

It echoes in his mind, somersaulting into: _Why would I do that?_

The answer comes to him more easily than expected. _Because they’re waiting for me._

He doesn’t hear the chains break, but he can feel them. Whatever heavy stone had been resting on his eyelids floats away into the air. He opens his eyes, bracing himself for too much light, too much everything—

But the world around him is quiet and cool, dimmed silver from the moonlight. He’s lying on a couch, and there’s no marks of metal on his wrists or his ankles. Mai’s hands are threading through his hair, and Kouta’s are on his pulse, steady and loyal.

“You’re awake,” murmurs Mai, leans down, her hair brushing his collarbone.

The only thought that goes through his mind is: _Her hair is brown again._

He lifts a hand towards her, towards Kouta, and finds himself somehow still surprised that there are no chains to hold him back.

“It was the damn fruit,” Kouta says. His brow is furrowed, lips twisted. He’s looking at the breakfast plate between the two of them. Neither of them are eating it, even though Akira had told them to.

Truthfully, Kaito doesn’t even know if he can eat, anymore. Every word scratches out of his throat so painfully, he can’t imagine forcing anything down.

Kouta continues, “It wanted all three of us. The whole planet. But mostly us. And you—it had you in its grasp. Helheim, Sagara… I guess they were the same thing. He was choking the life out of you. And when we killed him… you just fell.”

“I was dreaming,” Kaito mutters. Thinks about the forest where he’d been chained up. The way the sky had been a storm, the way the clouds had been judgmental gods. “He—it—they kept me locked up there, in my own head.”

“The poison,” Kouta says grimly. He reaches over and rolls up Kaito’s sleeve, traces the long, wicked scar left from where he’d been injected with Helheim. His touch is a rush like a cool river, pushing against the currents that rumble through his skin.

“How did you get me out?” Kaito asks, and his own voice seems to belong to someone else—to the small, scared boy who had looked up at Yggdrasil and wondered if he’d ever be that powerful. That mighty. That strong.

_Strength cost you everything_. The voice in his head sounds like Yoko.

He wonders if she regrets it.

Kouta’s mouth quirks in the ghost of a smile. “Wasn’t me.”

Mai stands on her tiptoes to watch the Baron dancers. The crowd is full of people with nervous laughter in their breaths and the pitter-patter of hearts trying to rebuild. Kaito watches Mai watching the dancers, the way her hair curls long and dark down her back, wonders why the picture of her in the crowd seems so wrong.

_She should be dancing_ , says the voice that sounds like Zack. _She should be up there._

_You should be up there, too._

He looks up at the stage and meets Zack’s eye. How many times had they practiced this dance? Zack still knows it by heart. Kaito’s not sure he does. He’s not sure what he does know by heart anymore. He thinks he could count those things on his fingers:

_One: I should be dead._

_Two: I betrayed everyone and everything I ever loved._

_Three: They saved me anyway._

Four and five are the colors of their hair and the shapes of their smiles. These, he keeps so close to his heart, he doesn’t think anyone could pry them out. Part of him worries still that the forest will find him, will hook its fingers deep into his ribcage and tug out all the little parts of him that made him worth saving.

“Why did you save me?”

Mai looks at him and the music grows dim, the anxious chatter of the people around them fading away. She looks at him and it’s like stepping on the scales of Anubis, like his heart is being weighed against a feather. He’s standing in a forest, standing in ruins, standing in Helheim and facing towards the moon.

“You asked me to,” says Mai, as simply as if it were the answer to a math equation on a school test. “You said—”

_Please please please save me—_

He can’t tell if he’s screaming or not. Helheim burns him up from the inside, Kouta’s sword white-hot on his scar. It’s not the pain that hurts him—it’s the feeling of being consumed whole, swallowed up by vines and magic so much older than him that it crushes him beneath its heel.

“Kaito!”

_Mai._

“Kaito, come on—”

_Kouta._

The sword slices down in a perfect arc, ripping open the wound. The poison of Helheim floods over him, twisting and tangling up inside his chest, inside his ribs, inside his blood. He screams—this time, he hears it—as the vines explode out of his arm and try to wrap him up in a python’s embrace.

And then there are hands, digging through the vines. Small, determined. Faithful. And the sword changes direction, cutting through the vines and the leaves. And Mai’s hand finds his heart and something golden lights up the sky.

That’s the last thing he remembers, before Helheim claims him again.

“I thought it didn’t work,” Mai says. The Baron dancers are starting up again, but Kaito can’t see them. Can’t see anything, except the look on Mai’s face and the memory of the battle, the memory of begging her to save him. There’s a version of him that would hate this, but that version is long-dead.

“Yggdrasil tried to run tests on you.” Mai shakes her head, brown curls ( _brown brown brown not white never white again_ ) fluttering against her wind-flushed cheeks. “I told them no. They thought you were the key to understanding Helheim, but I knew… I knew you’d come back. That you’d fight it. And if we’d let them have you, maybe you wouldn’t be able to.”

“I remember…” Kaito’s voice is hoarse from disuse, like he hasn’t spoken in years. It’s only been a month. “I remember Kouta cutting open the wound. And you…”

“It was the last thing I did with the fruit.” Mai’s lips twist in a bitter smile. “Before Kouta killed Sagara. And that was the end of it.”

The story feels incomplete. He had died. He had woken up. Kouta hadn’t left him. Mai had saved him. Somehow, they were still there.

He wonders if he’ll ever stop feeling like he’s waiting for the forest to crash down around him again.

He dreams about Kouta a lot. Kouta with white hair, with the red eye, with the sword aimed at his heart.

It never ends well.

“Was it worth it?” demands the god who wears Kouta’s face. “Were you worth it?”

_No_ , he tries to say, but his mouth won’t open and his lungs are full of dry air. They’re standing in Helheim, the trees growing thick and tangled, deep dark green all around them. Monsters lurking in the branches. Forbidden fruits begging to be swallowed.

Kouta turns the fruit over in his hands. It glimmers golden in the faraway sunlight.

“She gave it to me,” says Kouta. “She would never give it to you.”

_He’s lying_ , says a voice that sounds like Zack, buried deep in his mind. _She didn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that._

But he watches over and over again as Mai hands the fruit to Kouta. Watches the apple burn golden between their hands. Watches Kouta bite into it, the juice dribbling out. Watches his other eye turn red.

“We could have been gods,” Kouta says, and the white hair is gone but the red eyes remain. He’s wearing a Team Gaim hoodie. That hurts more than the silver armor. “We could have saved the whole world, if it wasn’t for you.”

He wakes up with the words pounding in his head: _What worth is your life to the rest of the universe?_

_What did you ever do to deserve this?_

“You shouldn’t have saved me,” he tells Kouta. The garage of Team Gaim is empty, for once. Nobody around to shoot him concerned glances when he doesn’t eat. It doesn’t feel like the right moment, but nothing ever does.

Kouta stares at him, a flicker of hurt in his eyes. “Why not?”

“It was stupid. I was already half-dead.”

“So what?” Kouta steps closer, draws himself up to look Kaito in the eye. “We brought you back.”

“You could have been _gods_ ,” Kaito snaps at him.

“I never wanted that,” retorts Kouta. “We never wanted that. It was a cruel trick played by a cruel god. Don’t let him get to you.”

“I’m not letting _him_ get to me, I’m letting _you_ get to me.”

Kouta makes a noise of annoyance, surges forward, and kisses him. He tastes like hot chocolate. His hands curl around Kaito’s cheeks, holding him there, rooted to the ground. Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t think his feet would be able to move. Kouta kisses him long and slow and deliberate, as if to make sure that Kaito can’t miss it. As if to make sure he won’t run away.

“Helheim took you _prisoner_ , Kaito,” he murmurs when he pulls away. “Nothing it made you believe is true. You’re here because Mai wanted you here. Because I wanted you here.”

It’s odd, how Kouta Kazuraba can make the most insane sentiments sound like nothing but stone-cold truth. Odder still, how Kaito almost finds himself believing him.

Mai kisses him two days later, standing on the empty dance stage as snow drifts lazily over Zawame City. The sky is cloudy and grey, but it feels like cleansing somehow, washing away the memories of the vines and the monsters and the bloodshed. Kaito remembers, lifetimes ago, standing on this stage with Mai and Kouta glowering up at him

_You were children._ It sounds like Yoko’s voice again. _Only children._

She tastes different from Kouta, slightly salty, her mouth softer against his. She has to reach up higher to cup his face, pulling him down to her height. She doesn’t kiss like she has something to prove, only like she wants him to know that the sun is going to shine again tomorrow.

Kaito lets her break the kiss, but he catches her wrists before she can drop them down from his face.

“What about Kouta?” he asks, and his voice doesn’t feel like he’s been screaming for a year. Something in his stomach does a backflip. He hadn’t dared dream of a day like this before.

Mai smiles, slides her fingers up to brush them through his windswept hair. “I love Kouta,” she tells him. “So do you.”

Such a simple truth, when she says it that way. Kaito nods slowly, then lowers his head to press against her forehead.

“Was it worth it?”

Mai exhales a soft, shaky breath. “It was worth everything.”

Kaito wakes up with his heart hammering against his ribcage.

It’s quiet in the garage, quiet and cool and dark. There are birds starting to hum just outside the windows. There’s no light, except for a tiny, blue night light flickering in the corner and the first stirrings of the sun just beyond.

Kouta raises his head from the pillow and presses his hand over Kaito’s. “You okay?”

Kaito glances over at him, and then at Mai on his other side. Both of them curled into him like planets in orbit. It feels silly, to think of it that way. The whole time, they’ve been the sun, and him the desperate, jealous moon. But they’re here anyway.

“Bad dream,” he mutters, sinking back down onto their makeshift mattress bed. “Go back to sleep.”

Kouta smiles sleepily at him. His head drops onto Kaito’s shoulder, the weight of it a comfort against the surge of shivers he always gets when he dreams about Helheim. Like somehow, if Kouta is here, all the monsters will be slain, all the battles laid to rest.

At his other side, he feels Mai stir, and takes her hand, interlacing their fingers and squeezing. She seems to sense his fading fear, because she doesn’t open her eyes, and her breathing evens out again.

Kaito closes his eyes and thinks to himself that Helheim is behind him. This time, he’ll learn to dream of better days.


End file.
